Leda Bourgogne

[Please scroll down for German version / Für Deutsch bitte scrollen Sie nach unten]

For her third solo exhibition at BQ, Leda Bourgogne (b. 1989, lives and works in Berlin) presents a walk-in structure consisting of an entanglement of painting, sculpture and site-specific installation.

The angled floor plan of the gallery is reminiscent of a brain in which Leda Bourgogne's artistic landscape is inscribed. Walls are covered with a see-through fabric on which abstract signs have been sprayed that resemble smoke structures or washed-out versions of the neurons drawn by Ramón y Cajal. A cortex, which takes the form of a temple-like construction made of wooden slats, a mirrored floor and glittering expanded metal, housing a new group of mirror objects with painterly inclusions. They reflect every glance, subtly addressing the viewer while opening up an interplay of perspectives between self and other.

In Bourgogne’s immersive settings, animal skeletons, spines, limbs, mirrors, and intimate encounters merge into mental formations, celebrating the paradoxical nature of the body-mind continuum. All elements in this mazy space entail metaphorical or literal meanings, a parcour through a mind of one’s own.

ɛl jumps back as she comes closer to put some lipstick on, noticing her haggard face in her car's rear-view mirror. She then puffs a cigarette, blowing out smoke rings. Smoke rings are vortices, swirling around, evaporating in the air. Vortices form in stirred fluids – or so Wikipedia says –, and their little turbulent flows, in which whole velocities are wrongly distributed, don't differ much from ɛl's feeling of her own self. Since an emotional cyclone distorted that notion, when she looks at the rear-view mirror, she sees a face, but she doesn't know whose one.

While she caresses the air with one hand, messing around with the fading smoke, ɛl turns the stirring wheel with the other. When in motion, the finger's skin can feel the air. When in motion, the slit of reality depicted on the rear-view mirror changes from every angle. The rectangle returns a dust devil from one spot and a mountain from the other. Was she not at this desert, in her Thunderbird, looking at the rear-view mirror, her experience would be another.

The impulse to put out the cigarette on her hand would not only alter the appearance of her skin but also trigger an amount of acute physical pain. Physical and emotional pain are part of the same broader neurological continuum, yet, while imaginary fears don’t harm you, the psychological pain they generate might (or so the neuroscientists say). An irrational impulse should be suppressed by a brain area, within the boundaries of the prefrontal cortex; a neural tissue which defines personality, and perception of reality. Should this area be altered, her pain would feel different.

The ability to differentiate conflicting ideas and the fact that these can coexist thoughts lies in the prefrontal cortex too. ɛl relates to the contradictory nature of the self, depicted in Moondog's track I’m This, I’m That. “I'm lost, I'm found; I'm free, I'm bound; I'm best, I'm worst; I'm blessed, I'm cursed” – he sings. Moondog's song reveals the coexistence of opposed natures in one same entity, yet the ability to identify contradictions could dilute if that brain area is harmed by a concussion or long-lasting stress. Any established idea of the self would be then wiped out by an invisible dust devil. Contradiction is inherent in every notion and every being, yet the increasing demand to choose absolutes and oversimplified coloured truths seems to ignore that, while depleting any ambiguity tolerance. Did we all get concussed?

In her fantasy, ɛl leaves the desert and drives her Thunderbird through different areas of her brain, leaving her memories in the rear-view mirror, moving forward, turning towards the Broca Area, and ending up in the BA 45. Once there, she would retrieve the semantic knowledge required to inhibit her impulses and regulate her emotions. Her mirror neurons wouldn’t tell her whether her trip is imaginary or real though.

In Berlin, BQ's mazy architecture may recall the one of a brain. A map of Leda Bourgogne's latest artistic scenery manifests in a collection of paintings and sculptures, which is distributed through the gallery's compartments. The walls are covered with see- through fabric, emulating a cortex, painted with abstract drawings that might recall smoke-looking patters, or washed-out versions of Ramón y Cajal's neurons, or both. In Bourgogne immersive settings, animal skeletons, spines, body limbs, mirrors or intimate encounters are depicted along with abstract motifs, all celebrating the paradoxical nature of the body-mind continuum. Other apparently opposed notions, such as tenderness-violence, pleasure-pain or bright-dark, exist in perpetual interaction in this same form and are present in the exhibition, confirming the complementarity and coexistence of opposites.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, maybe in someone else's dream, ɛl looks down, as she doesn't recognise her own face. The sister in the rear-view mirror is me, though she doesn't know it.

—Gabriela Acha

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Für ihre dritte Einzelausstellung bei BQ präsentiert Leda Bourgogne (geb. 1989, lebt und arbeitet in Berlin) eine begehbare Struktur, die sich aus der Verschränkung von Malerei, Skulptur und ortsspezifischer Installation zusammensetzt.

Der verwinkelte Grundriss der Galerie erinnert an ein Gehirn, in das sich die künstlerische Landschaft von Leda Bourgogne einschreibt. Die Wände sind mit einem durchsichtigen Stoff bespannt, auf den abstrakte Zeichen gesprayt wurden, die Rauchstrukturen oder verwaschenen Versionen der von Ramón y Cajal gezeichneten Neuronen gleichen. Ein Kortex, der die Form einer tempelähnlichen Struktur aus Holzleisten, Spiegelboden, und glitzerndem Streckmetall annimmt, beherbergt eine neue Werkgruppe von Spiegelobjekten mit malerischen Einschlüssen. Sie werfen den Blick zurück, richten sich auf subtile Weise an die Wahrnehmenden und eröffnen ein Wechselspiel der Perspektiven zwischen Selbst und Anderem.

In Leda Bourgognes neuen Gemälden verschmelzen Tierskelette, Wirbelsäulen, Gliedmaßen und intime Begegnungen zu mentalen Formationen (mental formations), die die paradoxe Natur des Körper-Geist-Kontinuums zelebrieren. Alle Elemente in diesem labyrinthischen, immersiven Raum besitzen metaphorische oder wortwörtliche Bedeutungen und bilden zusammen einen Parcours durch eine eigene Gedankenwelt.